


if only you had known me before the accident

by corsicana



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Character Study, Divine Pulse Angst (Fire Emblem), Divine Pulse Deaths (Fire Emblem), F/M, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Spoilers, Gen, Meta, Time Loop, the romo dimileth is blink and you miss it!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:08:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28322127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corsicana/pseuds/corsicana
Summary: How does Byleth know his class better than he does, to the point where she knows that Annette wouldn’t crumble under the guilt of taking a life, but, rather, would exalt it? How is Byleth willing to risk Annette’s life like that when Dimitri himself could have made a much safer kill?Why doesn’t Byleth blink as she kills the bandits, even as the blood splatters over her sword and her clothes? Why doesn’t Byleth reply when the bandits beg for their lives? Dimitri knows that some people simply have something unacceptable about them—oh, does he know that. Perhaps this is simply Byleth’s unacceptable quality. Yet this goes beyond unacceptable and into ruthless, into terrifying.Or: something isn't quite right when it comes to Byleth.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & My Unit | Byleth, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Comments: 2
Kudos: 63





	if only you had known me before the accident

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for opening this up! i hope you enjoy!
> 
> if you'd like to avoid the worst parts of the graphic descriptions of violence, stop reading at "he dreams of the red canyon" and start again at "for all the dreams he has." take care of yourself!
> 
> [this fic is inspired by the dimitri portion of this art! :-)](https://pyuart.tumblr.com/post/617934463668781056/heres-a-little-comic-i-did-some-months-ago-i)

Dimitri watches Byleth the whole time they’re in the Red Canyon. She commands them flawlessly—it’s downright frightening, how precisely she can analyze the flow of battle. She sends Annette in for a close-range kill that easily could have gone awry. Dimitri expects Annette to begin shaking, maybe even screaming, as the bandit dies, but she instead gets this grin on her face and cheers, “I did it! See? I’m a great fighter!”

How does Byleth know his class better than he does, to the point where she knows that Annette wouldn’t crumble under the guilt of taking a life, but, rather, would exalt it? How is Byleth willing to risk Annette’s life like that when Dimitri himself could have made a much safer kill?

Why doesn’t Byleth blink as she kills the bandits, even as the blood splatters over her sword and her clothes? Why doesn’t Byleth reply when the bandits beg for their lives? Dimitri knows that some people simply have something unacceptable about them—oh, does he know that. Perhaps this is simply Byleth’s unacceptable quality. Yet this goes beyond unacceptable and into ruthless, into terrifying.

But even in his disgust, Dimitri is almost envious. Perhaps indifference is better than the bloodlust that sometimes overtakes him in his rage. Perhaps Felix would still like him if that were his reaction. Perhaps he would be able to accept that indifference if it were his own. But if it extended to his subjects, to his friends, as Byleth’s indifference extends to her students—Dimitri would never be able to make peace with that. 

Byleth doesn’t smile after the battle, not even with the knowledge that all her students somehow survived. Dimitri’s words taste bitter as he tells her, “You led us well, Professor,” because she _did_. It’s undeniable that she’s a master strategist to have pulled such a battle off with such risky tactics.

This happens every battle. But something lurks underneath the surface: Dimitri catches her talking multiple times to Sylvain the month they’re to subdue Miklan’s group of thieves, giving him gifts that he evidently loves. They’re ones that Dimitri wouldn’t have thought he would even like. How does she _know_?

In that battle, too, she makes sure Sylvain never has to fight against Miklan, keeping him firmly in the back of the formation. She doesn’t even make him fight the demonic beast that appears. Miklan may not have even known that Sylvain was in the force sent to take him down, in all honesty, all because Byleth made a pointed effort in that direction.

It’s not that her favor has somehow fallen on Sylvain alone, given how clearly she despises his flirting and how she hasn’t spent any particular amount of time with him over the other Blue Lions, but Dimitri can’t think of any other reason. Byleth was ruthless in every other battle, yet she softened purely out of sentimentality. Would it not make more strategic sense to send Sylvain in against Miklan, to try to catch Miklan off-guard or perhaps try to enrage him to the point of mistepping? Would that not fit better alongside her previous actions? 

Stranger still is that, after Dimitri requests Byleth’s assistance in finding Flayn, she figures out where Flayn is almost instantly. She couldn’t have talked to more than a few people in the time it takes her to report back that she’s certain Jertiza took her away. Shrewdness in battle is one thing, but to figure out a mystery that has eluded the entirety of the Knights of Seiros in less than an hour is another thing altogether. 

Dimitri doesn’t ask. Byleth would just fix him with that empty stare for a moment before walking away, as she has almost every other time they’ve spoken. 

What changes everything is when Byleth genuinely, honest-to-Sothis _smiles_ after finding Flayn. Dimitri knows facades well, and this smile is not part of one. He can’t help himself when he asks her to smile again, as though it would somehow falter under further scrutiny.

It doesn’t. If anything, it shines more under the light of examination. It’s a small smile, but it teems with humanity. The twitch of her lips betrays how unused she is to smiling; the glint to her eyes betrays pride; the flush to her cheeks betrays the overflow of emotion, and… 

It’s a far more genuine smile than Dimitri has worn in years. What ends up faltering is not Byleth’s smile, but Dimitri’s dislike of her, because such a smile betrays a heart that Dimitri wishes he still had. Anyone who holds it cannot be twisted, least of all as much as Dimitri perceived her to be.

And, oh, is Dimitri twisted. Remire Village causes him to slip, fighting viciously and with abandon. Perhaps it is the haze of his bloodlust, but it is as though everything has been moved a few feet in another direction every time he looks. Wasn’t Ingrid just on the other side of the battlefield, saving one of the innocent villagers? Why is she with their main force now?

(Reinforcements—bolstered with an archer—appear just a few minutes later where Ingrid was. Dimitri refuses to think about it.)

It’s like Dimitri is in one of Ashe’s knight tales. Nothing should come together so seamlessly as that battle did. Least of all with so many variables—and isn’t that the strangest part! Certainly, Byleth never does show her emotions outright, but the reveal of Tomas’ betrayal must have made her feel _something_. Yet she carries on her strategy without a hitch, sending Ingrid—their most physically powerful, yet also magically resistant unit; how did she _know_?—right towards Solon without even blinking.

Strange, strange, and stranger still. But—it would not be becoming of Dimitri to judge her for this. Perhaps she’d always suspected, for whatever reason. Perhaps she assumed the general would be magical, what with the magical nature of the disease. 

Then—Jeralt dies, and Byleth’s heart pours forth. Not as it would have with, say, Mercedes or Annette, but the red rim around her eyes and how she refuses to eat is telltale. Suddenly, when Dimitri sees himself in Byleth, it is not a negative thing, per se—it’s a reminder of why he must walk the path he walks. In all truth, he reveals too much when he tries to comfort her, but that something about her—how similar they are—makes his heart pour forth, too.

Maybe that could become a tether, a source of hope. But none of that matters when the war comes.

/ * \

Byleth looks upon him with such concern, such _pity_ , in her eyes. Anger curls hot in Dimitri’s gut every time he meets her gaze. Does she think him lesser? Unable to fulfill the responsibilities he’s taken over from the dead?

She checks up on him every day. Dimitri recognizes the quick sound of her footsteps, now, arriving like clockwork every afternoon. Not that it, or her concern, matters—Byleth is but a tool to accomplish his revenge.

Byleth always looks as though she wants to say something. She’s not as quiet as she used to be, but even that much is a surprise. Dimitri is sick of it. It’s been weeks—as the leader of the army, if she cannot even speak to him about some trifling matter, how are they to ever topple the Imperial resistance?

“Spit it out,” Dimitri tells her one day, voice gravelly with disuse. 

If Dimitri did not know her so well, perhaps he would have missed her startle. It only takes her a moment for her to reply, “It would not help matters.”

“Then why dwell on it for _weeks_? We do not have time for frivolities when _she_ is still out there.” Dimitri crosses his arms, glowering down at her. How _dare_ she?

“I simply… wish some things did not have to be. Do you not wish the same, sometimes?” Then Byleth has turned on her heel, walking away from Dimitri before he can even process what she’s said, much less reply. He watches her go, but she does not look back. 

Is she lamenting the state he’s in? Ha! As though her nostalgia could curb the path he’s on. He’s travelled much too far down on it to change courses now. Sentimentality like that will not relieve the dead of the burdens, much less Dimitri of his. 

But then—Rodrigue dies, and Byleth somehow knows to stop him from marching on the Imperial capital that very night. She tells him exactly what he needs to hear. 

Byleth somehow still holds all the answers, even when nothing in the world makes sense anymore.

(Strange, how she averts her eyes when he points that out.)

/ * \

Even after Dimitri resolves to make his life his own, the dead do not loose their hold on him so easily. They still drape over his shoulder, whispering angrily in his ear for Edelgard’s head, demanding to be put to rest. Dimitri expected as much—even without an agent, the dead’s regrets will still linger forevermore.

What Dimitri does _not_ expect is for the living to begin haunting him, too, in the strangest of ways. He has long since put his Academy days behind him, yet he begins to dream of them again. Although—perhaps it’s not fair to call them dreams of his Academy days, for they’re not quite that. He dreams solely of their missions, of twisted versions of them.

He dreams of the Red Canyon. He dreams of when Byleth commanded Annette to kill the bandit at close-range, but, this time, Mercedes isn’t beside Annette as she does so. This time, Annette misses. This time, she shrieks as the bandit charges her, her scream bouncing off the walls of the canyon in a horrific chorus. 

Dimitri makes it in time for her blood to splatter all over his clothes and his lance, but not in time to save her. Annette’s clothes become stained in a pool of her own blood. Mercedes collapses beside Annette, the blood seeping down the hill and into her skirt, and Dimitri faintly hears her sobbing. But before Dimitri’s hands can even begin to tremble, before the bloodlust begins to overtake him—

Everything resets. Byleth sends Mercedes to idle just within range of the bandit, then sends Annette beside her to attack the bandit, just as it had actually happened. Dimitri stares at Byleth’s steely expression, searching for something he doesn’t find. 

Dimitri can’t meet her eyes the next morning. Or the next, or the next, or the next, because the dreams keep coming. At Remire Village, Ingrid’s pegasus is shot out of the sky after an archer suddenly appears, and she falls from a sickening height. Even over the din of battle, everyone hears her bones crack. 

Everything resets. Byleth commands Ingrid to retreat and dismount, despite how much of a boon her increased movement would be and how there isn’t a single archer around. Byleth refuses to meet Dimitri’s gaze.

For all the dreams he has, ones of almost every battle—why doesn’t he ever dream of Gronder?

/ * \

“Have you been taking care of yourself?” Byleth stops Dimitri after a war council, eventually. The bags have set deep beneath his eyes, and the dead have been speaking louder than the living. “You look…” She flattens her lips into a line, tilting her head to the side. “Awful,” she eventually decides.

“I have been doing my best,” Dimitri tells her truthfully, and he looks away. Sylvain and Felix are arguing something fierce just a little bit down the hall, but from what Dimitri can overhear, it’s nothing serious. Each time Dimitri blinks, though, all he sees is Sylvain cradling Felix after he was struck by a surprise Thoron. _We promised to die together, Felix_ , Sylvain had begged him, shaking his limp body. _You never break your promises._ “I simply have been… having trouble sleeping lately.”

“I still have some chamomile in my stores,” Byleth tells him, apparently choosing to ignore how Dimitri refuses to make eye contact with her. “It should help you sleep.”

“Ah, I couldn’t possibly—”

“I’ll tell Dedue.”

Dimitri swallows. A difficult decision, but—“If you insist. I should be finished with my meetings shortly after sundown, if that is agreeable to you.”

Byleth nods. Strange—she doesn’t have that air of happiness about her whenever her students accept her invitations to tea. “I’ll see you in the courtyard.”

Truthfully, Dimitri considers sneaking back to his room instead of meeting up with Byleth, but that would simply cause more issues. Besides, perhaps spending more time with Byleth will erase the images of her that his dreams have painted. 

Byleth smiles at him when he arrives. The night air is crisp, just shy of being chilly, but the tea that Byleth already brewed is easily warm enough to make up for it. “Thank you, Professor,” Dimitri tells her as he sits down. “This is lovely.”

“Of course,” she replies easily. There’s a beat of silence in which Dimitri presumes she’s deciding on a topic to bring up, as this usually goes. Instead, she says, “Tell me what you’ve been dreaming about.”

Dimitri blinks, jostling his tea a little bit in surprise. “Oh, they’re trifles, I assure you. Nothing to be concerned about.” Nothing that he wants to talk about with Byleth, of all people.

“Surely they aren’t, if they’re affecting you so much,” she insists, resting her chin in her hands.

Dimitri swallows. Byleth still has that commanding presence she did when she was a professor, perhaps even magnified now that she leads the army, and it is… difficult at best to shake off her scrutiny. Even Sylvain couldn’t dismiss her ire whenever he skipped classes; far be it from Dimitri to think that he could best Sylvain’s silver tongue. 

“I have been… dreaming about our past battles,” Dimitri says cautiously. “Of what may have gone wrong. I’m sure you understand, perhaps better than I do, what a burden it is to carry the lives of others. It simply… frightens me, that we may lose those we call friends, or that we may have lost them before we could have even known them as such.”

Byleth hums. “I see.” She fixes him with a curious gaze, just short of piercing. (She always knows.) “Is that all?” 

“Essentially,” Dimitri lies.

Byleth’s expression does not change. “You’re not alone in dreaming of such things. I often dream of what it may be like, to turn back time and prevent this war in the first place.” Each word is painstaking, dripping with implication. Dimitri knows, then, that he has said too much.

“Do you?”

“I do,” Byleth murmurs, peering at her tea, how the liquid ripples when she sets it down. “But I have come to terms with that some things are meant to be. No matter what, I could not have prevented my father’s death, for example. It still pains me, of course, but… None of us can outwit fate.”

Dimitri’s mouth has gone dry. He places his hands in his lap, pointedly away from his fragile teacup. “Do you believe that of Rodrigue?”

When Byleth looks back up, her gaze is as steely as in his dreams. “I did all I could.”

Dimitri’s hands clench into fists. “Is that true?”

She does not even blink. “War does not allow for pretty decisions. I could have stopped her, certainly. I have. But I have also seen what becomes of Faerghus if I do. Do you think you would have ever come back to yourself, had Rodrigue not paid that price for you?” She does not leave time for Dimitri to reply. “I have witnessed you destroy Faerghus in the name of your revenge. I have seen us try to piece together Faerghus after your death and fail.”

There is a pause, then, the silence so thick that Dimitri cannot even begin to form words. Then: “Do you know how incensed Rodrigue was whenever he found out? He would not have peace until I reset and let him sacrifice himself for you.” She takes a halting breath, voice wavering as she continues. “I wish there was another way, Dimitri. But there isn’t. You cannot imagine how many centuries I have spent trying to find one.”

“Tell me, and then I will decide if that is true.” Dimitri hates how anger seeps into his tone, all too reminiscent of _before_. But it is justified, now. 

So Byleth does. She tells him of how his bloodlust never ceases, even after killing Edelgard, and how it evolves into horrendous conquest after conquest until his own subjects overthrow him. Faerghus topples into ruin soon after, unable to hold the weight of post-war reparations and all its atrocities. She tells him of how morale plummets after the death of their king, should Fleche have assassinated him, and how Adrestia masterfully takes advantage of that with spies and strategic conquest alike until they conquer both Faerghus and the Alliance. She tells him of every path she walked down, every detour she took, and how each one led to a dead end but this one.

“You must have realized this is not the only life I have lived,” she says at length. “It always… After the war ends, I find myself back in Remire Village, meeting you all for the first time. And it is not the Goddess that orchestrates that. It is something even bigger than her. I have tried leading Claude, thinking perhaps neutrality is the best option, but that leads to even more bloodshed than this path does. I have tried leading Edelgard, coaxing her off this path, but she is not to be deterred. I have tried organizing the Church against Edelgard, but it goes much the same as Claude’s path. This is… the best future there is. Even so, loss is inevitable.”

“…What does Rodrigue say, when he finds out all of this?”

“He thanks me for my dedication and insists that it is his turn, now, to protect you. It is always the same.”

“Of course,” Dimitri mutters bitterly. “It is all too like him to insist on his duty, even at such a cost.”

“It was not out of duty, but of love for you,” Byleth says softly. “You were… a son to him. And you must know he never dies with regret. I’ll always make sure of it.”

/ * \

Dimitri’s dreams do not fade now that he knows. If anything, they grow more intense, magnified.

“It’s like when you walk into a room and forget why you went in there in the first place,” she mentions off-handedly. “That peculiar sense of blankness, no matter how hard to try to chase the thread of memory.”

Byleth no longer avoids his gaze on the battlefield. She meets his with a fierce determination, as though reiterating her promise— _he never dies with regret_ , rife with the implication that nobody else will, either. 

Dimitri does not know how Byleth has lived through hundreds of iterations of this war and not been corrupted. He has lived through it once and nearly did not return, after all. Still—he is grateful.

Byleth never does speak a word of what is to come. Perhaps it is for the better that she does not. Dimitri would not be able to handle the knowledge of any of the Blue Lions being fated to die. 

Off the battlefield, too, Byleth relaxes considerably around him. She smiles more, even laughing from time to time. Only _ever_ around him—she is still as stone-faced as ever in the war council and around the other Blue Lions. When Dimitri asks about it, she gets a tiny frown on her face, one that speaks to a far deeper sorrow. “It is… a complicated situation. I know things about Sylvain’s childhood, for example, that he has not even come close to trusting me with this life. Every time I speak to him, it is a shadow of what we once had, and the memory… aches.”

“Could you not simply reforge the bond?” 

“I suppose,” Byleth murmurs. “But is that truly fair to either of us? I’ll find myself back at Remire Village after the war ends, and he would be left without one of the few true friends he has ever made, as will I. It is… easier, this way. The least amount of pain and regret. Besides, the closer I am to any of the students, the more likely it is that my burden will become shared.”

Dimitri glances at her. “What makes me different, if I may ask?”

Byleth doesn’t meet his gaze. “I suppose it is that I’m selfish. This burden is… a lonely thing to carry. I am not sure I could truly bear it alone. If I have to share it with anyone, I would rather it be you.”

There is something on the tip of Dimitri’s tongue, something that would certainly cause the pain and regret that Byleth speaks of.

Perhaps Byleth already knows. 

He swallows it down.

/ * \

When they leave Edelgard’s throne room, Byleth prevents him from looking back at Edelgard’s corpse, as though—as though he could be the one to turn back time and save her. “Was there—”

“No.”

/ * \

“It’s your job to look forward, as the king,” Byleth tells him later. “It’s my job to look back.”

“You know I would not ask that of you,” Dimitri murmurs. “In a just world—”

“There is no such thing,” Byleth states simply. “But I believe you can make the closest thing there is.”

Ah. Not _we_ as it had been for so long. “Are you going back soon?”

Byleth looks away. “Yes. In a few days, most likely.”

It has only been a day since Adrestia fell. Byleth will likely be gone before the week is even up, before Dimitri is even coronated. “You never live to see the fruits of your labor, do you?” Dimitri realizes. “Why—why go through such anguish, time and time again, for nothing?”

“It’s not for nothing,” Byleth says evenly. “Not for me, and not for this world. I would not be so selfish as to believe this world does not continue on without me. Even should it not, as long as this world exists, the people within it matter. And repairing it alongside you… brings me great joy.”

Dimitri swallows. “As it does for me, my friend.”

/ * \

“Please, forgive our intrusion. We wouldn’t bother you were the situation not dire…” 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading this! i had so much fun exploring this... divine pulse is such a twisted concept, especially when throwing in the meta of starting over a new save file, which kind of doubles up on the meaning! it also plays so well into byleth's lack of emotionality and how the player naturally becomes more flippant over time with taking risks/doing quests/etc, which i thought would be interesting to explore from a gameplay perspective as well. i really hope this was as enjoyable for you to read as it was for me to write!
> 
> HUGE thanks to [luci](https://archiveofourown.org/users/luciferTM/pseuds/luciferTM) for betaing for me! i appreciate your dedication so much!
> 
> please feel free to reach out to me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/candidum) i would love to make some new fire emblem friends! :) also, please feel free to leave a comment and/or kudos! they mean so much to me and keep me going.
> 
> thank you again!! i hope you have a lovely day!!


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